NFL Prop Bet: Will Colin Kaepernick be left out in the cold?

Just five years ago, he was a starting quarterback in the Super Bowl. Today, former San Francisco 49ers QB Colin Kaepernick is a man without a team, and many believe his stance in support of Black Lives Matter is why he is out of work.

Is Colin Kaepernick done as an NFLer?

Colin Kaepernick took a stand last year.

Actually, that’s not entirely accurate.

Kaepernick, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback, took a knee, opting to kneel during the national anthem in protest of what he perceives to be the oppression of African Americans and other minorities in the United States.

It’s a stance that has made Kaepernick a hero in some quarters and a paraiah in other circles, taking heat for his decision from as high a place as U.S. President Donald Trump.

Among it’s many NFL season prop bets, TopBet is offering the following straightforward wager on Kaepernick – will he be on the opening day roster of an NFL team?

If you think he will, that wager carries odds of +200. But if you’re certain that Kaepernick will be left out in the cold when the NFL regular season kicks off, then that bet offers odds of -260.

As NFL training camps opened this week, the smart money still looked to be on the latter outcome. The Miami Dolphins, desperate for a quarterback after Ryan Tannehill suffered a season-ending knee injury, turned to Jay Cutler, the former Chicago Bears QB who in the spring announced he was leaving the game to take a broadcasting job with the Fox network and hinted during his retirement press conference that perhaps his heart wasn’t in the game any longer.

The Dolphins viewed this as a better solution to their problems that the 29-year-old Kaepernick, which has to be looked upon as a telling scenario of how far Kaepernick’s stock has fallen in NFL front offices.

Catastrophic injury would seem to be Kaepernick’s best ally at this point, and yet when such a catastrophy happened, his phone did not ring.

There are oppoosing schools of thought on why Kaepernick is on the verge of needing to apply for unempoyment benefits. Obviously, the most popular refrain is that his social activism has turned him into a distraction that teams simply desire to avoid.

Over the years, several athletes have found that their political stances left them on the outside looking in at their sport of choice, whether it was heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali’s stance against the Vietman War, or Curt Flood’s assault on baseball’s reserve clause. Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf quickly vanished from the NBA when, like Kaepernick, he took a stance and refused to stand for the National Anthem over the way he perceived Muslims were being treated.

Others critique Kaepernick’s play as the determining factor, though his past coaches defend his work ethic and ability and last season while playing for a dismal 49ers squad, Kaepernick ranked 17th in NFL passer rating. That may not be Hall of Fame caliber, but it is certainly far from unemployable numbers. With his elusiveness on the field and his ability to improvise, at the very least, you’d have to think he’d make an ideal change of pace back-up for an NFL team.

The best thing that Kaepernick has in his corner at this stage of the game is that the game he plays is football. It’s brutal. Athletes get seriously injured all of the time, especially quarterbacks. It’s a sad but true scenario that Kaerpernick’s best hope at good fortune may very well rest on misfortune suffered by a fellow quarterback.

Until that happens, our assessment of when Kaepernick might again find himself on an NFL roster?

It's starting to get real in the bid for NCAA football playoff positions. This Saturday afternoon will see four games pitting teams ranked in the top 25 against one another. Dreams will go up in smoke as the wheat continues to be separated for the chaff in pursuit of a spot in the College Football Playoff.

The last two years, the NFC South has produced that side's Super Bowl representative and there's a very good chance they could make it three in a row this year. The Atlanta Falcons are contenders, the Carolina Panthers are on the rebound, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are up and coming and all of the sudden, the New Orleans Saints are the team to beat.

You think Buffalo Bills fans have had it rough, dealing with an NFL-long playoff drought that extends back to 1999? Well, you might want to talk to Buffalo Sabres fans. The Sabres have told the faithful, to be patient as they build from within, yet the team still hasn't seen the Stanley Cup playoffs since 2011.

The successful history of the Los Angeles Dodgers was written around great pitching, from Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale through Fernando Valenzuela and Orel Hershiser, to Clayton Kershaw. But can the Dodgers go toe to toe on the hill with the deep pitching staff of the Houston Astros in the World Series?